[tz] [PROPOSED] Merge timezones that are alike since 1970

[Mark Davis ☕️]

+3
Mark


On Sat, May 22, 2021 at 3:51 PM Clive D.W. Feather via tz <tz at iana.org>
wrote:

> Brian Inglis via tz said:
> > On 2021-05-22 14:10, Tom Lane via tz wrote:
> > > Paul Eggert via tz <tz at iana.org> writes:
> > >> On 5/22/21 11:17 AM, Tim Parenti wrote:
> > >>> In particular, the latter group (things
> > >>> like America/La_Paz -> Etc/GMT+4) seems to encourage things or
> behaviors
> > >>> which historically cause confusion, especially for novices:
> >
> > >> We could avoid these problems by merging Etc/GMT+4 into America/La_Paz
> > >> rather than vice versa. That would be easy to arrange, and would
> result
> > >> in the same number of timezones. A downside would be that
> TZ='Etc/GMT+4'
> > >> would no longer be equivalent to TZ='<-04>4' for pre-1970 timestamps,
> > >> but those timestamps are out of scope anyway.
> >
> > > That seems really bad.  If I ask for Etc/GMT+4, I should get a fixed
> > > GMT+4 offset for all time, not whatever the heck Bolivia's pre-1970
> > > behavior was.  Those zone names are not, or at least should not be,
> > > conditional on political decisions.  IMO, Etc/GMT+4 is just an
> > > alternative way to spell the '<-04>4' notation ... one that could
> > > be very handy if dealing with software that knows the tzdb names
> > > but not POSIX notation.
> >
> > +1 agreed - please *NEVER* merge fixed offset and political zones!
> > They are not the same thing and a little duplication to avoid errors is
> good.
>
> +2 agreed.
>
> --
> Clive D.W. Feather          | If you lie to the compiler,
> Email: clive at davros.org     | it will get its revenge.
> Web: http://www.davros.org  |   - Henry Spencer
> Mobile: +44 7973 377646
>
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